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what can you do? how should YOU think of gvmt?
Posted on: January 18, 2020 at 12:21:26 CT
90Tiger STL
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All of this leaves the question of what our political priorities should be. If it were up to me, I would push a button and reduce government to the size it was after the American Revolution, under the Articles of Confederation, and then look forward to debating whether we should get rid of the rest.
But because that is not likely to happen soon, my own sense is that if present trends continue, the years ahead will bear more in common with the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century than the country and world as we knew it between the years of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War.
Unlike the planned and regimented economy of the postwar period, the Gilded Age was a time when technological advance and demographic shifts made the society essentially ungovernable, even given the vast power of the state. Not that this is any reason for the lovers of liberty to let down their guard: the War on Spain and the Great War that followed the post–civil war peace shattered civilization. The same can happen again to the great civilization being created and renewed in our own time. After all, the elephant can still do a lot of damage.
We can do our part to encourage the good developments and forestall the bad. What should our priorities be? Two politicians I saw on C-SPAN recently gave a speech to instruct us on the first question we should ask when we go to vote.
The first one said that we should think mainly about the children, that we should elect politicians who put their interest first. As an extension of that principle, we should ask the state to further the interests of our families and communities, this person said. Now, if all this means anything, it strikes me as highly dangerous. The state does not own the children and we don't really want to live in a society in which the state is permitted to do with our children, family, or communities what it wishes.
Moreover, there is no such thing as the collective interests of children, families, and communities, and to pretend that there is potentially despotic. In any case, it solves no political issue, since right and left both have different plans for what they believe is best for our children. These days, their plans reach into every area of their lives, from what program they should be using to learn to read to the conditions under which they are permitted to take their first job. I can't but think of Hannah Arendt’s warning that politicians who invoke the children are potential totalitarians.
The second politician said that we should think mainly about our security when we go to vote. The Constitution, he said, empowers the federal government to collect taxes to provide for the common defense, so that is what we should do. He proceeded to justify the whole of the American military empire that has generated so much hatred and opposition around the world and interfered so seriously with our trading relationships. He was the classic case of a person who completely ignores the founders' warnings against war, standing armies, and militarism.
But because that is not likely to happen soon, my own sense is that if present trends continue, the years ahead will bear more in common with the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century than the country and world as we knew it between the years of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War.
Unlike the planned and regimented economy of the postwar period, the Gilded Age was a time when technological advance and demographic shifts made the society essentially ungovernable, even given the vast power of the state. Not that this is any reason for the lovers of liberty to let down their guard: the War on Spain and the Great War that followed the post–civil war peace shattered civilization. The same can happen again to the great civilization being created and renewed in our own time. After all, the elephant can still do a lot of damage.
We can do our part to encourage the good developments and forestall the bad. What should our priorities be? Two politicians I saw on C-SPAN recently gave a speech to instruct us on the first question we should ask when we go to vote.
The first one said that we should think mainly about the children, that we should elect politicians who put their interest first. As an extension of that principle, we should ask the state to further the interests of our families and communities, this person said. Now, if all this means anything, it strikes me as highly dangerous. The state does not own the children and we don't really want to live in a society in which the state is permitted to do with our children, family, or communities what it wishes.
Moreover, there is no such thing as the collective interests of children, families, and communities, and to pretend that there is potentially despotic. In any case, it solves no political issue, since right and left both have different plans for what they believe is best for our children. These days, their plans reach into every area of their lives, from what program they should be using to learn to read to the conditions under which they are permitted to take their first job. I can't but think of Hannah Arendt’s warning that politicians who invoke the children are potential totalitarians.
The second politician said that we should think mainly about our security when we go to vote. The Constitution, he said, empowers the federal government to collect taxes to provide for the common defense, so that is what we should do. He proceeded to justify the whole of the American military empire that has generated so much hatred and opposition around the world and interfered so seriously with our trading relationships. He was the classic case of a person who completely ignores the founders' warnings against war, standing armies, and militarism.
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what can you do? how should YOU think of gvmt? - 90Tiger STL - 1/18 12:21:26